The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 22, August, 1859: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
Religion
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 22, August, 1859: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
Let me here say, that a few days in Havana make clear to one the
seclusion of women in the East, and its causes. Wherever the animal
vigor of men is so large in proportion to their moral power, as in those
countries, women must be glad to forego their liberties for the
protection of the strong arm. One master is better for them than many.
Whatever tyranny may grow out of such barbarous manners, the institution
springs from a veritable necessity and an original good intention. The
Christian religion should change this, which is justifiable only in a
Mohammedan country. But where that religion is so loosely administered
as in Cuba, where its teachers themselves frequent the cock-pit and the
gaming-table, one must not look for too much of its power in the manners
and morals of men.
The Beneficenza was our next station. It is, as its name signifies, an
institution with a benevolent purpose, an orphan asylum and foundling
hospital in one. The State here charitably considers that infants who
are abandoned by their parents are as much orphaned as they can become
by the interposition of death,--nay, more. The death of parents oftenest
leaves a child with some friend or relative; but the foundling is cut
off from all human relationship,--he belongs only to the hand that takes
him up, when he has been left to die. Despite the kind cruelty of modern
theories, which will not allow of suitable provision for the sufferer,
for fear of increasing the frequency of the crime by which he suffers,
our hearts revolt at the miserable condition of those little creatures
in our great cities, confounded with hopeless pauperism in its desolate
asylums, or farmed out to starve and die. They belong to the State, and
the State should nobly retrieve the world's offence against them. Their
broken galaxy shows many a bright star here and there. Such a little
wailing creature has been found who has commanded great actions and done
good service among men. Let us, then, cherish the race of foundlings, of
whom Moses was the first and the greatest. The princess who reared him
saw not the glorious destiny which lay hid, as a birth-jewel, in his
little basket of reeds. She saw only, as some of us have seen, a
helpless, friendless babe. When he dedicated to her his first edition of
the Pentateuch--But, nay, he did not; for neither gratitude nor
dedications were in fashion among the Jews.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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